Artist Model – Research

Anoushka Akel

Anoushka Akel is a New Zealand artist who works with oil and pastel, she uses techniques such as rubbing, smudging, layering and dry brushing using a cloth and sandpaper to reduce painting to traces. She spoke about how she wants her works “to burn slowly, to release their ideas over a longer period of time, as a counterbalance to the rapid consumption we have become so accustomed to in the age of the internet.”Her earlier works tend to be quite small, allowing the audience to stand closer to the work and take in more detail for a longer time. Akel likes to use the colours purple and blue in her works and is commonly shown in most of her pieces.

Own works I have recently done for this brief have similar themes to Akel, I tend to stick to two or three colours when it comes to making art. Blue and red together are usually my go-to and are something I have included in my pieces for this brief. The contrast between the colours has always been stunning to me, never blending the two together but sometimes bringing in different shades of the colour to highlight and bring depth to my work. Akel also has a liking for similar colours, blue and purple, but she has a tendency to bring in light tones to break those two colours apart.

Bathing (Lamplight of Urine) by Anoushka Akel at Michael Lett (ocula.com)